fototazo 19: Amani Willett

Amani Willett
The Smoker
2011

The Image: Amani Willett, "Untitled"

© Amani Willett, Untitled

Amani Willett: This picture shows my mother a few days after having knee replacement surgery. Besides the obvious physical pain of the surgery, it was also an extremely difficult period for her emotionally, as her mother died while having the same procedure 15 years earlier. I remember my dad, brother and I assuring her that everything would turn of okay, even as a little irrational uncertainty gnawed at us in the back of our heads.

Looking at her knee, it was impossible for me to comprehend the amount of pain an incision that size must cause. I instead found myself observing the stitched area from a formal point of view - concentrating on the way it looked in the late-afternoon light and how the colors of the knee, floor and couch seemed to blend together.

Strangely enough, when fototazo contacted me and asked if I would write about this image, I had just had abdominal surgery. I find that I now relate to the image much more emotionally. If I were able to photograph the scene again, I might focus on trying to convey the intensity of pain involved in surgery. Who knows, maybe I would end up with a picture of her face in pain instead.

Either way, this knowledge serves as a wonderful reminder that I bring my own experiences and biases to everything I photograph and to remember to be aware of how these experiences shape the images I create.

f100: Steven Ahlgren, Jo Ann Walters, Hin Chua, Daniel Traub

© Steven Ahlgren. Commercial Bank, Dultuh, MN.

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged in photography to pick two photographers that deserve (more) recognition - the underknown, the under-respected as well as not-appreciated-enough favorites. A little more information on the project is available in the first post in the series here.

We began the series with responses from Nicholas Nixon, Matt Johnston, Blake Andrews, John Edwin Mason, Aline Smithson, Colin Pantall, Michael Werner, Liza Fetissova, Laurence Salzmann, Bryan Formhals, Richard Mosse and Shane Lavalette.

Today we continue with responses from Amy Stein and Amani Willett. 

Respondent: Amy Stein is a photographer, teacher and curator based in New York City. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture and the environment. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections. In 2006, she was a winner of the Saatchi Gallery/Guardian Prize for her Domesticated series. In 2007, she was named one of the top fifteen emerging photographers in the world by American Photo magazine and she won the Critical Mass Book Award. Her first book, Domesticated, was released in 2008. It won the best book award at the 2008 New York Photo Festival.

Selections: Steven Ahlgren and Jo Ann Walters. Amy Stein interviews Steven Ahlgren on her blog here and Jo Ann Walters here. 

© Jo Ann Walters

Respondent: Amani Willett was featured in the book Street Photography Now and is a member of the iN-PUBLiC collective of street photographers. His photographs have also been included in the books ReGeneration: Telling Stories From Our Twenties and Dawn of the 21st Century: The Millennium Photo Project. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston among many other places. He was interviewed in January 2011 on fototazo here.

Selections: Hin Chua and Daniel Traub

Hin Chua
Too often, photographic projects suffer from either a lack of concept or uninteresting images.  Hin Chua's pictures get both parts right in equal measure.  In his project "After the Fall," Hin spent three years exploring environments in transition - a journey which took him through the outskirts of 40 cities - the result of which is a stunning body of photographs which examine the areas where man meets nature.

© Hin Chua. From the series "After the Fall"

Daniel Traub

© Daniel Traub

Interview: Amani Willett

Interviewed by phone from his home in Brooklyn, NY
January 16th and 19th, 2011

New York City-based photographer Amani Willett was recently featured in the book Street Photography Now and is a long-term member of the highly respected iN-PUBLiC collective of street photographers. His photographs have also been included in the books ReGeneration: Telling Stories From Our Twenties and Dawn of the 21st Century: The Millennium Photo Project. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among many other spaces.

In this full-length interview he talks about his years working at Magnum Photos, why street photography must evolve as a genre to survive, and his decision to enter a photography MFA program in the midst of a successful career. He also shares with us 15 new images not previously published or shown.